


Gedrocht

by SS_Procrastinating_Sinner



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Instability, Romance, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-10-01 23:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20435648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SS_Procrastinating_Sinner/pseuds/SS_Procrastinating_Sinner
Summary: It was disturbing her, watching him interact with normal people. With humans. He truly seemed like a man like this, but Moira knew better. Knew of the psychotic monster that reside underneath his skin. If only those fools could see... It was so obvious as he stood before them, with those cold eyes that stared too intently. She must simply be too smart for his facade.Or perhaps she had been the fool all along..._______________________________________________In which Moira recalls how a monster became a Man.





	Gedrocht

**Author's Note:**

> So long story short, I really liked Sigma's origin story and wanted to explore his character and his mentall instability. I also wanted to write out how someone as unempathetic (and perhaps sociopathic) as Moira might respond to having to forcefully realise that someone seemingly terrifying and dangerous and down right insane was actually just a human with some cool gravity powers and an eccentric personality and a mental issue. Also I didn't really plan for this to be romance so it's very subtle,  
Please enjoy-

In the publics eyes? A long dead scientist.

In Talon's eyes? A newfound weapon.

In Moira's eyes? _Sigma was a monster who thought himself a man._

He was very good at hiding it in polite company, with his gentlemanly disposition and charming mannerisms. Those he decided to act for found him pleasant, and some would even describe him as handsome for his age. Most wouldn't blame the fools, seeing only broad shoulders and an intelligent character. And when he very occasionally spoke of his work, the women would swoon, completely oblivious to what any of his theories meant, simply impressed by big words and what they figured was a most likely big bank account.

Moira had seen the mirth in his eyes once when he came upon a woman such as this. The corner of his mouth twitched as he described progressively insane and impossible theories and experiments; ones that could no doubt destroy the world if somehow acted upon. The desperate girl was none the wiser, and Moira wondered if the man simply found her ignorance entertaining, or truly believed in these psychopathic theories.

Another time though, she had bared witness to him interacting with someone of either high intellect or impeccable instinct, because the moment that boy looked into those cold haunted eyes, he paled and froze like a corpse in the midst of rigor mortis. It's possible he was not as insightful as Moira perceived though, and Sigma had simply let his mask fall for a moment, because just then the man had expressed unfathomably convincing concern, and the poor boy was dumbfounded. He quickly muttered an apology, possibly thinking he had thought wrong of the monster, but when Sigma tried to give a reassuring smile? God, Moira had never seen a young adult instantly burst into tears before, and she did not blame the meek thing. That pitiful excuse of a smile was simply a slight curve to his mouth, so small and yet so forced, and nowhere near meeting his too wide, unblinking eyes. The boy had abandoned his duties as barista right then, running out the back like a bat out of hell. This was the only occasion where his presence received a sane response.

It was increasingly difficult to watch the monstrous creature pass as human so easily, and she dread the moment she would once again have to accompany him on a trip among civilians. The worst part of it though, was that Moira was sure she too would fall for the fallacy, had she not been there when they liberated him from government issued containment. Sometimes she still heard those whispers that had echoed the sterile halls, unintelligible and almost drowned out by the blood curdling screams and manic laughter.

It wasn't any better when they were back in the confines of Talons facility, for the interactions there provided the comparisons that made his public appearances so jarring. When back in base, Sigma made no attempt to hide his true nature, often whispering to himself in dutch and english, twitching or staring or just being a nuisance to everyones sanity.

Despite all this, Moira couldn't ignore the monsters genius, when he wasn't rambling or muttering or asking about that elusive melody.

When he was first welcomed into Talon, she had shared her lab with him, and he was surprisingly helpful, providing insight and contradictions that sped along progress in her unethical experiments. She marveled at his work as he somehow controlled what looked to be miniature black holes, the ingenious of it truly breathtaking.

Although... the experience was intensely dampened when she had asked Sigma how it worked, and he had gone off on a spiel about gravity being a harness, then progressively slipped into nonsensical equations, jumping from one topic to another mid-sentence, twitching violently until, finally, he stopped and stared at her for a moment that felt like an eternity.

_"Do you hear that music?"_

He had muttered, eyes trained on something behind Moira, very far away.

She had tried to ask,

_"What do you mean...?"_

But he walked away before she could utter a syllable.

That was the first episode Moira had witnessed, and she requested he have his own facilities soon after. It was met with no resistance.

It seemed everyone in Talon was at least slightly disquieted by the mumbling abomination. Many had been awoken by his screams in the night. Some had heard the unintelligible whispers in the darkest hours of early morning. But, only she had witnessed the true horror of what Moira dubbed '_Sigma's__ Affliction._'

_Something terrible had made_ _ that_ _ monster._

_________________________________________

It had been raining all morning, the soothing patter leaving even the members of Talon feeling calm and mellow, making the usually foreboding facility quiet and peaceful as everyone went about their business in private.

Moira had been feeling restless, having made no progress on improving her biotic grasp to allow for longer range. In a silent fit of frustration, she took her empty coffee cup and tablet and decided a walk might help clear her thoughts. She had also ran out of creamer, and much to the chagrin of her colleagues, she loved making her coffee into a sickeningly sweet concoction of creamer and sugar and milk, so a trip to the mess hall was her primary concern.

Her bare feet made no sound against the cold tile of the hall leading from her laboratory, her thin tank-top and sweatpants failing to keep out the chill, and all she could hear was her own breathing and the white noise of gentle rain. The semi-silence and soothing cold did wonders for the headache that was growing painful at the base of her skull. She sighed, perhaps these coffee fueled nights devoid of sleep were taking effect.

It was then, as she was just about to turn the corner that would lead to the mess hall, and the blessed sugary substance that would save her from bitter coffee, that she heard a sound just on the edge of hearing. She probably wouldn't have noticed it, if she hadn't spent all night and morning in relative silence, with only the rain to accompany her. She probably would have kept walking, far enough away that she wouldn't have been pulled towards Sigma's temporary lab by a second noise. That she never would have been given the opportunity to let curiosity get the better of her.

If only.

As she stood in front of his door, preparing to knock and give a polite good morning and perhaps invite him to provide her some company if he seemed particularly sane, she heard the whispers. The ones that occasionally kept her up at night, or haunted her dreams when she had them, always unintelligible and sounding like a language too complex for a human tongue to articulate.

She could have turned around then, continued in the opposite direction towards the mess hall, or returned to her lab, or made her way to her quarters to let the blackness of exhausted sleep take her. If she wasn't so used to the whispering, or if she was easier to fright, or if she wasn't so damn curious, she could have ignored it completely and pretended she never heard it.

If only.

She had the opportunity to actively prevent what had transpired next, what she had witnessed and could never forget even when she wasn't observing that mess that called itself a man. Moira so desperately wished she had taken it.

Instead, she had seen that the sliding door was left unlocked to all Talon personnel, and pressed her palm down on the glass of the display next to it. Walking in as the door slid open and closed with a rush of air.

The whispering had stopped, and the sound of rain could not reach here, and it was very dark. The silence pressed in on her like cotton, stifling in it's intensity. The change of atmosphere kept Moira from calling out as she stood in the middle of the lab, a growing sense of dread gnawing at her insides. With a well adjusted eye, she studied the state of her colleagues work space, and grew increasingly less confident in her burst of curiosity. The place was a mess, torn to shreds with glass and papers and equipment scattered about. Questionable substances, some bubbling and others spreading sluggishly, were sprayed on the walls or dripping from counters or pooled on the floor.

She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a familiar voice.

_"What are you doing here Dr. O'Deorain."_

It was a statement, not a question. Each syllable carefully pronounced, steadily and quietly, as if forced out of a throat that was unfamiliar with english, as if Sigma was trying to keep his voice monotone and without inflection.

It was decidedly unpleasant.

_"I heard a noise. What happened in here?" _Moira questioned, her hair whipping about like a candles flame as she surveyed the damage.

_"Where are you?"_

Her queries were met with more deafening silence, heavy and suffocating.

Moira stood there for a moment, thinking perhaps the man was attacked, but she quickly ignored that assumption as the alarms most definitely would have gone off, and Sigma did not sound hurt.

She moved to step further into the lab and find the manual light switch, so she could find the man and properly ask what had happened, when Sigma's voice cut through the silence like a butterknife through a torso.

_**"Leave."**_

She physically jumped for the first time in years, goose flesh traveling up and down her bare arms. She was not at all adverse to obeying, familiar with her own frustrated breakdowns when facing failure in her scientific endeavors, and truly terrified of what one from this monster might entail, besides the obvious destruction of his lab. But damn her hearing, for a quiet pained sigh caused her to hesitate in her retreat, and in a rare moment of concern she asked,

_"Are you alright?"_

Two wasted opportunities to flee, god how Moira wished she had never asked.

It was like a raging storm had suddenly filled the room, the broken instruments and papers and shards of glass shaking violently and beginning to rise into the now charged air of the dark lab, the pools of viscous liquid dripping upwards and towards the ceiling. The whispering had begun again, so loud now as if it was actually in her ears, crawling through her skull, buzzing inside her mind like a swarm of flies eating at her sanity. She was shaking and looking around wildly at the objects circling the room, a slight breeze beginning to form as they spun progressively faster. And then in the midst of the chaos, the monster who called himself a man appeared in front of her as if out of thin air, floating. His icy eyes fixing on her and freezing her where she stood, too wide and unblinking. His nostrils flaring in anger and his mouth pressed into a thin line.

Moira heard him begin to speak before his mouth had even opened.

**_"Do I look alright!?"_**

In baffled shock Moira watched as the edges of his frame began to shudder, as if she was being shaken wildly and seeing him as a blur. Later, she would be able to wonder if his matter was truly rippling, or if the fluctuations in gravity were causing light to reach her eyes improperly. But just then she was too terrified to try and make sense of it all.

Moira still wonders what would have happened if she decided to flee at that very moment. Perhaps she would have been shred to pieces by the whirlwind of glass circling them, or Sigma would have decided to crush her brains inside her skull, or he could have accidentally thrown her against the ceiling with the flick of his wrist and ended her life with a sickening crunch.

Luckily, foolishly, she didn't run. Instead Moira looked into that monsters too wide, piercingly icy eyes and, reaching out with a shaking hand, to keep him back or comfort him she didn't know, whispered a simple, empathetic

_"No."_

And it was like a flip was switched as the objects violently whipping around the room grew still and fell to the ground with a cacophony of noise. As the rippling of Sigma's frame ceased and suddenly there was a huge body falling towards her and onto its knees, gripping Moira like a lifeline as it shook.

She had no idea what to do.

Once again, Sigma's voice cut through the silence, but this time it was not steady at all. Instead, it was hitching and small and so very broken.

_"I've seen how you all look at me... And... Even though we... You are all simply colleagues..."_

He looked up at Moira, eyes not icy or too wide or piercing, but shiny with unshed tears.

_"I never wanted any of you to see this..."_

He muttered, his voice breaking as a whisper sounding akin to an admonishment overlapped his words. And Moira, perhaps in fear of another episode, or maybe because she actually felt some form of comradery towards Sigma, lowered herself to her knees and, among the chaos of his lab and her now cracked tablet and shattered coffee cup and stuttering thoughts, hugged him.

As he sagged against her and went on about his affliction with sobbing breaths, about once being the proud Dr. Kuiper and the failed experiment and the incarceration and the pain and brokenness of his mind. Moira realised that the body shaking against her did not belong to any kind of monster who could put on a convincing facade of concern, or truly believe in horribly dangerous theories while making fools of greedy women. The only thing he had been hiding was a few twitches, some eccentric mannerisms; a broken mind.

And because she had never fled, because she was curious, because she had such good hearing and stayed up late and drank coffee with too much creamer, Moira was forced to have an inconvenient epiphany.

_Sigma- no, _ ** _Dr. Kuiper_ ** _ was simply a man._

And as she mumbled this into his graying hair, he ceased his babbling and froze as if electrocuted, then held her even tighter and cried quietly in the crook of her neck.

Moira, as she shushed him and pet his head like a child, thought back on all those times she had genuinely seen Dr. Kuiper as a monster, and almost laughed at her foolishness. After hearing him try to sound as if he wasn't on the edge of an episode, she was sure he was a disturbingly bad actor. And from that moment on, to Moira's dismay, she could no longer hold anything against Dr. Kuiper, for the old man had clawed his way into her good graces by allowing her to see his most monstrous side.

And now he was consistently grating on her nerves, always coming to her when he was on edge because he claimed she prevented episodes, or being too talkative about not only his genius but the mundane as well, or making jokes that made her want to cackle like a mad-woman, or making puppy dog eyes that no old man should be allowed to make when she would try to refuse to abandon her own research and

"_Go have some stupid young kid fun"_

If Sombra wasn't still petrified by him, she was sure the two immature bafoons would get along splendidly.

But, comforted in finally being able able to understand the eccentric enigma,

_Moira could only see Sigma as a man who thought himself a monster._

_(_ _And did not hide it well.)_

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah thats it, just a short story exploring Sigma and how he might be perceived. I hope Moira doesn't seem too Out Of Character. I wrote this instead of sleeping so I hope it's at least decent. Please inform me of any glaring errors :)


End file.
